 So we'll go ahead and get started and let other folks kind of come in as hopefully they can. You got me again. No ATON tonight. Sorry about that. But we have a lot to chat about and a lot to hear about this evening. So I'm really appreciative that you're all here. First order of business is just some intros. So I'll call on folks. And if I miss anyone, you can just please speak up and introduce yourselves. Hi, I'll start with me. I'm Erin Jacobson. I am the Attorney General Office designee to this wonderful panel. Next up Chief Stevens. Hi, I'm Stevens, Chief of the Noligan Tribe and Executive Director of Abenaki, Abenaki. Laura Carter. Hi, everybody. My name is Laura Carter. I'm a Data Analyst for the Division of Racial Justice Statistics within the Office of Racial Equity. Derek, Kamiya Defnick. Good evening, everyone. Derek Kamiya Defnick. He, him pronouns. My role is community and restorative justice executive with the Department of Corrections. And I'm a commissioner's designee. Susanna Davis. Kail Saled. Hi, everybody. I'm Susanna Davis, the Racial Equity Director for the State. Thank you. Elizabeth Morris. I'm Elizabeth Morris. I'm the Juvenile Justice Coordinator at the Family Services Division. I am not the designee though. That would be either Tyler Allen or depending on who's able to join today. And Kyle Harris. Hi, good afternoon or good evening Kyle Harris. I'm one of the commissioners on the cannabis control boards. Rebecca Turner. Hi, everyone. Rebecca Turner, panel member for the Office of the Defender General. James Pepper. Hey there. James Pepper. I'm the Chair of the cannabis control board and just a visitor tonight. Thank you. Representative Arsenault. Hi. Sorry. I'm always slow on iPad Zoom. I'm Representative Angela Arsenault from Williston and I serve on House Judiciary. So I'm here as mostly a listener and observer, a reporter backer to the Judiciary Committee. Thank you. Jessica Brown. Hi everyone. My name is Jessica Brown. She, her pronouns. I'm a community member of Pliny to this panel and I work as an assistant professor and the director of the Center for Justice Reform at Vermont Long Graduate School. Julie Holberg. Hi there, Julie Holberg. She, her pronouns and I am a commissioner on the cannabis control board visiting tonight. Good. I hope I say your name right. Shock Rose. Hi. So I'm, it's just Jacqueline. I just try to shorten it for ease. Sorry. Sorry, Jacqueline. It's fine. I work with Derek Miodovnik at the Department of Corrections. I'm the Health Equity Director there. And Isaac, whose last name I can't see on the screen. Hello. I'm Isaac Ousu. I'm the director of Community Engagement and Support with the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance. Welcome. Welcome. Thank you. Jeffrey Jones. I can't hear you, Jeffrey. We can see you. Lots of people would think that's a good thing. I know. Plank holder on the committee and well retired. Thank you. Hi. Tyler Allen. Good evening, everybody. My name is Tyler Allen. I'm the commissioner designated appointee from DCF. Thank you. I think I got everybody, but if I missed someone, oh, Judge Morrissey, I'm so sorry. Hi. That's quite all right. My name is Mary Morrissey. I'm one of the Vermont Superior Court judges and I'm the judiciary representative to the committee. Thank you. Great. Thank you. And lawyers just love when we miss judges. That's cool. And who else did I miss Jennifer Pullman? There you are. Hi. Hi. I'm the director of the Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services and I don't have an official seat. I just keep showing up as a visitor. So thank you. We're glad you do. Thank you. Anybody else? Hey, everybody. Good evening. Sheila Linton. She, her pronouns, appointee, community appointee and co-founder and executive director of the Root Social Justice Center. Oh boy. Who else did I forget? Sorry, Sheila. Okay. Wonderful. Oh, Mark. I hope you just got here because I'm really missing a lot of people here tonight. Hi. I just got here. Good. I am the executive director of Vermont Racial Justice Alliance. I'm also the coach here of the Health Equity Advisory Commission. Great. Welcome. Anyone else I forgot or who just arrived? Okay. What a fantastic group. Next little kind of housekeeping thing on the agenda is just to entertain any emotions to add or delete anything from the agenda. Does anyone have any changes to our agenda? Okay. Good. And as I did kind of mention at the top of the meeting, of course the top was different for everybody as you're coming on in. Aton can't be here tonight. We're sending him good wishes for him to continue focusing on his health, which he is as we want him to be. And so just taking a moment to acknowledge that our fearless chair is not me. It's Aton and we miss him always. But hopefully we'll be back if his doctor lets him at our next meeting. And if his doctor doesn't, then we don't want him here, do we? Okay. Next, if I can even find the agenda. Oh, we need to entertain a motion to approve the minutes from our October meeting. Anyone want to move for that? I'll make a motion to approve the minutes from last meeting. And I can second that. Great. Thank you. Any discussion? I just want to say like great job with the minutes. I love all the visuals and captures and everything and how it's laid out just great work with capturing people's what people are saying as well as giving other visual information in the minutes. It's really appreciative. So thank you. Thank you for saying that. Sheila, those kudos go to Grant who I don't see here tonight, but if he's not here, he does listen to the recording and then really just does such a fantastic job with our minutes. I would say I would I would request one change to the minutes. And that is only that at the end of the minutes, like after we adjourned, there's some notes there that don't pertain to our ARDAT meeting. It was from when a group of folks stayed on and talked about a different matter entirely. So that would be my only recommendation for amending the minutes. But then that's okay with folks. I would I would move to approve the minutes amended that way. So moved. Second. I'll second that. Yeah, I wasn't part of any of that conversation. Okay, great. Yeah, it's just wasn't part of the meeting. It's yeah, this is a virtual space. So it's a little odd. But I think of it as just kind of like a conversation that happened after the meeting. It's not really it's not officially a part of the ARDAT meeting. So they shouldn't be in our minutes. Okay, so all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Or raise your hand. Great. Thank you. Minutes as amended approved. And I think if my I think you just have to ask if there's any abstentions and everything because sometimes I didn't see any seem like everyone had their hand up. But yeah, there are any abstentions. I abstained. This is Jessica. Okay, thank you, Jessica. Any nays. Great. Thank you. Minutes as amended officially approved. So now we get to the meat of our meeting and we get to start with a presentation by Susanna Davis and Laura Carter from the Office of Racial Equity regarding their initial review of the Cannabis Control Board's social equity program. So I believe I enabled screen share for everybody. But if you have any issues with that, just let me know. You can take it. Thanks, Erin. Thanks, Erin. This is Susanna. It does look like I have screen share abilities. Thank you for that. So I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. But I'm going to let Laura drive the presentation. I think that everybody here has already met Laura because I'm pretty sure she's been at previous art app meetings. I'm seeing some nods. So yeah, I just wanted to give a couple of notes before we get started with this. Number one, we're going to thank you in advance for holding questions until the end. Or if it's just burning a hole in your brain, you can put it in the chat just to get it down on paper. And I'll just I'll be watching that and we can come back to it. Also, the information we're going to show is pretty just pretty basic. So it's not going to be an incredibly detailed and deep analysis. This is just so that people can get familiar with the program and the fund. And another important thing here is that this is point in time data. Okay, so it's going to continue to evolve. It may not be reflective of past circumstances, and it's not going to be reflective of future circumstances. And I'm also really, really grateful to see all three members of the CCD here actually, because I imagine you all will probably have questions that we are less equipped to answer. So we're grateful that they're here as well. So I'm going to go ahead and share my screen and we'll kick it over to Laura whenever she is ready. Can you all see that? We can, yeah. Thank you, Susana. I'm gonna actually turn my camera off so you guys can't see me, my face while I'm talking. Can anybody out there hear me? Oh my god, I'm sorry, I muted my speakers. I'm so sorry. We can hear you, Susana. Yeah, I'm gonna shut up. Thank you so much everybody for the opportunity to present more on this today. As Susana said, this is an analysis of point in time data that we received from the board and kind of a general overall or overarching feedback on some of the intake questionnaires and other data that the Canada's control board is collecting and then with an overview of the legislative reasons why we're doing this. So can you go to the next slide? I'm just going to be annoying about that. So there's a statutory requirement to report and collect data on the CCB social equity program. So that's what we're here to discuss. Again, we sent this out earlier. So I'm gonna kind of fly through these. Can you go through to the next one? This is the enabling legislation for the cannabis control board social equity program. Pretty straightforward. Act 164 and Act 62. Next slide, please. And then what we're really here to discuss is the cannabis business development fund. Ah, sorry. It was established by Act 62 in 2021 to provide low interest loans and grants to social equity licenses. The Vermont legislature allocated $500,000 to the CCB to the cannabis business development fund. And additional funding for this program comes from contributions made by integrated licenses and other licenses with businesses hiring two or more employees. And the fund is administered by the Agency of Commerce and Community Development, which I'll likely refer to as ACCD moving forward. Next slide, please. So these are the application requirements to be considered a social equity licensee. You have to meet one of these following criteria, be Black or Hispanic. And we have this as our defining impacted demographics, which we'll go into more later, have served a sentence of incarceration in a correctional facility as a result of a cannabis-related conviction. And we define that later as defining individual harm. Three, have a family member who has served a sentence of incarceration in a correctional facility as a result of cannabis-related conviction, which is, again, defined later in defining individual harm. And then, lastly, be able to demonstrate that they are from a community that has been historically disproportionately impacted by cannabis prohibition. I don't know if you guys can hear that. My husband is playing video games in the background. Sorry. That they have been personally harmed by that impact. And then we later define that for impacted communities. And there's a note at the bottom of the slide. I won't go through these or we won't really talk about them, but you have a copy of the slide deck. But in Appendix C, we kind of outlined the difficulties for just defining what disproportionately impacted communities look like. Next slide, please. So there's also, oh, sorry. The CCB staff recommends to the board whether an applicant meets the criteria for a social equity status or not. And the board votes to confirm or deny this. The social equity applicants are prioritized. The part, the benefits of this program is also receiving application fee waivers and license fee waivers in the first year. Each of the percentages after one of the, we consulted with the board briefly before sending out the slide deck. And the question of what happens to the SE licensee after the third year period has elapsed with the 25% fee. Hearing back from Bryn that in the fifth year of operation of the SE licensee, the fee will be due upon renewal. However, the licensee is still prioritized. So that's something I just want to clarify as well. And then social equity applicants and licensees are eligible for disbursements from the Cannabis Business Development Fund, which is administered by a CCB. Next, please. So this is just the pre-qualification process and outcomes about how people can be pre-qualified for licenses. And in this, this is an excerpt from the January 2023 CCB report. So as of that time, 222 applicants were approved for pre-qualification and 202 of those pre-qualified applicants applied for a license and 51 of those were social equity applicants. Next slide, please. The benefits and resources, which I know I like briefly breezed through for the social equity applicants, they have access by statute to technical assistance and grant funding through the Cannabis Business Development Fund and then the licensing fee structure, as I mentioned in an earlier slide. And then the social equity license applicants and economic empowerment applicants have access to a lot of different business resources, business and growth and technical assistance programs. And there's a link for a full list of those resources on the Cannabis Control Board website. Next slide. Can I just add one thing here? Yep. So on this slide, what we want you to take away from this is that in addition to there being a separate track for social equity applicants and licensees, there's also a separate track for what's called economic empowerment applicants and licensees. And the difference between those is you already saw the criteria for social equity, right? You have to be black or Hispanic. You have to prove individual harm through incarceration of you or a close family member, or you have to be from a disproportionately impacted community. Whereas for the economic empowerment applicants, those are folks who also are underrepresented in either the sector or in business or in some other setting, but who do not qualify to be social equity applicants. So you'll have other underrepresented demographic groups there. We'll talk a little bit more about it, but I just wanted to make sure that it was clear to you all that this introduces a separate track altogether that's not social equity, but it's still closely related. Thank you. Next slide, please. So now we're going to get into the licensing data. So this is a graph from the CCB December 31st, 22 report. And again, as Susanna mentioned, and as I probably will mention many more times, our point in time data is going to be a little different than this point in time data. But this is just kind of to show you what the current breakdown is by race and cannabis licensing recipients from that point in time. Next, please. All right. I just want to give people a couple of seconds to digest this. So in this slide, you'll see on the left what we have is the breakdown numerically, again, based on the point in time data that we have. And that's broken down in racial categories, black, non-Hispanic, Hispanic, Latino, American, Indian, Alaskan, Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, white, non-disclosed and other. And then we have each of them broken down by license. So social equity is S-E-E-E is economic empowerment, as Susanna explained earlier. And then standard we have, which is just the regular license. And then we have a total column. And then to the right, you can see that we have that broken down also by license and racial categories. Next slide. So here, this is a breakdown of what the social equity eligibility, based on primary applicant, looks like. So for those that qualified due to being Black or African American or Hispanic and Latino, that equals 46 individuals who qualified. And then we, Tiffany and I, when we were looking at this data, wanted to identify some areas of overlap too that we felt were kind of important to highlight. So for that, for the green bubbles, we can see that there's also a 15% overlap with those who had cannabis incarcerations. And nearly a third of those qualified, 46 qualified individuals, there's one third of them are women. And then to the right, those who qualified as a primary applicant for social equity, 40 of them were qualified individuals due to incarceration. And you can see again, 98% of them were white, non-Hispanic. One Asian Pacific Islander and 15% of that group are also women. The social equity cannabis licenses are intended to benefit individuals from Black or Hispanic populations and communities who have experienced cannabis related incarceration and disproportionate harm, as we mentioned before. Next, please. Laura, can you just remind the group, what does it mean to be a primary applicant versus a non-primary? Yes. So and this, the board might be able to, the members of the board might be able to explain this better, but if the primary applicant is the primary person submitting for the license. So the individual, I believe, would be the owner. And does that right, Pepper or Kyle or Julia? Yes, that's right. This is James Pepper from the board. Yeah, I mean, usually one person does the application. You know, we have a kind of an odd rule in Vermont that anyone who has any sort of day-to-day control over a business or owns, has a financial stake of 10% or greater, has to be identified. So those are all the kind of owners and affiliates and primaries beyond just the kind of primary applicant. Just to add to that, I think the primary applicant has to be a 51% owner to qualify for social equity. So if you have two people who apply and one person qualifies for social equity, that person has to be a 51% owner in the business. Thank you. Next slide, please. So we also, we broke this down, the social equity licensees by demographic identity. And again, we're repeating a lot of the same information, but it's for those Black, Hispanic, Latino populations and those who have experienced cannabis related incarceration, either a family member or personally. So this chart on the right, we have the racial or ethnic identity breakdown. So the first is the non-Hispanic Black individuals and the overlap with cannabis incarceration is a total of two, one due to personal and another due to family. Hispanic and Latino Black, white, other and all the same racial groups from before in the little dot chart that we saw. Again, Tiffany and I really wanted to focus on the overlap and identifying where the racial groups overlap with incarceration and also highlighting the female overlap to show that data point as well. Next slide, please. So this, so this is data showing those who qualified via co-applicants. So those who qualified based on Black, African American, Hispanic, Latino, totaled 11 qualified individuals and 18% of those had an overlap with cannabis incarceration. And then to the right, we have those who qualified due to the incarceration history of the co-applicant, which equals 10 individuals and 100% of them were white, non-Hispanic. All 21 primary applicants identified as non-Hispanic white without cannabis related chargers and three were white women, the rest of them are white males. Next, please. So these are the qualifications to meet the economic empowerment licenses. As we discussed a little bit earlier, these are also disproportionately harmed groups. I'm probably not saying this right. I apologize. Yes. So these are just the outlines of who qualifies for the economic empowerment licenses, which is again just another, I'm sorry, I'm losing my words. Next slide, please. We'll just move forward. Okay. For this slide, I just want to say that the four categories on the bottom, the cannabis offense, but not incarceration, the other offense, but not incarceration, other offenses, the medical patient and other, those aren't actually qualifiers. They're not criteria outlined currently by the board to qualify as an economic empowerment candidate. However, Tiffany and I again, we're trying to find and highlight different things to maybe encourage expansion to the EE licensure, but I just wanted to say that because that was some of the feedback that we received earlier from the cannabis control board. So again, based on that point in time data that we got, the total number of women were that based on demographic identity were nine, veterans were five, those with disability is 24, those who identify in the LGBTQ community, three, First Nation Indigenous and Native Americans, two, Asian Pacific or Asian American and Pacific Islander, four. And then the other communities, we didn't have any candidates. But again, just to reemphasize, those last four were our thoughts on potential expansion and identifying overlaps. Next slide, please. So in our queries that we ran, we noticed a few discrepancies. I will say again, this point in time data and I have had the chance to talk with some of the licensing team at the board and we were able to identify kind of where those discrepancies came up or why those discrepancies came up. But we wanted to make sure again that these were highlighted. The first table is those that we found that were awarded social equity status, but we weren't totally sure why. It turns out that later, those applications were eventually dismissed. But again, based on point in time data that we had. And then the second chart is those that we identified that were expected to meet the criteria for social equity status based on the data that we had. But what we ended up getting from the licensing team that's not here is that the top six, those in the racial identity category of Hispanic Latino, they did not apply for social equity in their application. And then for the group of nine of them on the bottom, three of them were denied social equity status because they did not meet the criteria of incarceration to change their status as the process evolved. And then the remaining did not end up applying for social equity status. So those are the reasons for those discrepancies, but felt it important to keep those in there because they were things that we had identified. Next slide, please. This is just a breakdown by race and then by license and all the tiers and different types. I know it's really hard to read because the font is really small. In the bar chart on the left, the yellow bar is black or African American and the green bar is cannabis incarceration. And then again, it's broken down by each of the different tier options and licenses, license types that the board offers. And then the one on the right has the dark blue is the standard license, the economic empowerment is like the light blue. And then we have again, in that group, yellow is black or African American and green is cannabis incarceration. Next slide, please. I'm just going to give us a couple more seconds to thank you. Oh yeah, for sure. Thank you. So something that we wanted to highlight too and I believe is included in our recommendation section as part of the data collection adding county level data or adding that in into the data that the board already has based on some national landscapes that have already been done. So on the right, we have two graphics from the ACLU report, a tale of two countries from 2020, which uses 2018 data. The top one that you can that Susana zoomed in on right now shows the counties with above the national average of racial disparities per cannabis arrest. And then the bottom one shows the largest racial disparities within the state. So what we did from there, filtering out the information that we got from the board and adding county information so that we could show how our county level data compares. And so in the bar chart on the left, you'll see that the gray bar represents social equity licenses. The light blue bar is the economic empowerment licenses and the dark blue is standard. These counties, the six counties that are highlighted in red on the left on the left bar chart with no have noted racial disparities and marijuana possession arrests and represent 364 or 52 and a half percent of all of the licenses. And these counties have 71 of 131 or 52.54.2% of the social equity licenses and 55 of 101 or 54.5% of the economic empowerment licenses. So that was something that we found pretty impactful. Next slide, please. So in an estimation, this is all of the things of the charts that we just walked through told us. So they're in total, there were 296 total licenses, 486 of them were standard, 77% of those were white individuals, 3.7% were other and 18.7% were black, did blank or did not disclose their race or ethnicity. 99% were economic license, economic empowerment licenses with a range in diversity, including women and veterans, those with disabilities and LGBTQIA. 39 of those or 5.6% were primary applicants or social equity licenses with primary applicants who met the requirements. And then 46 or 6.6%, I apologize, let me back up, 39 or 5.6% were those who met the incarceration status of either personal or family. And then 46 or 6.6% met the social equity requirements based on being black, African American, Hispanic, or Latino. 21 primary applicants whose co-applicants met, there were 21 individuals whose co-applicants also met the eligibility criteria for social equity status, 15 white males, three males who didn't disclose their race or ethnicity and three white women. And then the 17 potential social equity applicants for those that we identified in the discrepancy section, but as we've already discussed, the discrepancy has been solved. And most of those individuals did not go through with their social equity license. Next, please. So the board, one of the services provided is done through this consulting called Roads Consulting. And one of the services that we did for this presentation and for the board was to kind of take a look at the Roads data that they got, again, all from a point in time. These were, I think, and someone from the CCB will have to clarify this, but I want to say that only a quarter of the social equity applicants have conducted, the only a quarter of social equity applicants have been conducted, have done this intake assessment conducted by Roads Consulting. And again, all of these numbers are just broken down based on the point in time data that we got from the board with what they assisted applicants with and the total number of hours of support in this slide. Can you go to the next slide, please? So taking a look at the survey, what we were thinking is that much of the information from the samples were blank or didn't contain enough detail for us to really provide a robust analysis of this, of the survey or the usefulness of the survey, and thinking that this only is useful to a kind of a controlled board as there is information in the survey. We had a very small sample and half of the sample was an individual who couldn't utilize the intake form to the fullest potential just because they hadn't been in business yet, at least as of the date of the sample. The sections underneath that and in the following slides as well are just the question headings. And so from there, the blue that you'll see is areas that most of the folks taking the intake survey left blank or areas that I felt could be expanded on or that we felt could be expanded on by the board. So I won't get into the weeds with that, but that's a few. So could you go to the next slide, please? So there's a few of these. And again, you all have the PowerPoint, so I don't want to take it more time on this. Can we fast forward? Thank you. Sorry. So we also took a look at the social equity interview question analysis. And the only piece of the questionnaire I wanted to highlight was the documentation section. This top quote is directly from the questionnaire, which is, you know, we talked about a few things. Can I ask you to look for documents, you or your family might have retained concerning these large things that could be qualifying factors to provide enough proof, I guess, of being historically and disproportionately impacted. So some of the questions that we had for the board is if this impacts any exempt or private information and if a person were to refuse to provide documentation, would the other answers that they provided as part of the interview be enough to push them through to be qualified for the social equity status? What are the barriers to accessing this additional information? And are there other equitable standards that could be implemented by the board in place of these additional documentation pieces? And then we didn't get any samples of the questionnaires, we just had a blank form. So kind of understanding more what the interview answers typically look like based on the questions that the board is asking. And what part of this interview form has been helpful for the cannabis control board in determining social equity applicants currently when they don't meet the initial criteria? Next, please. Another thing that another set of data that we looked at were the cannabis ID card holder surveys. In this case, we're talking about only owners, so it's only 125 total responses. We were able to identify 28 responses coming from social equity businesses. And then also wanted to note that gender did not have a drop-down, but other categories like race and education did, which you can kind of see based on these answers. And I'll just let you have a few seconds to look at that so that you're not listening to me talk more. Okay. Next, please. So now we're going to move into our recommendations. These recommendations have been collected from other states. There are several states that have social equity programs, and they all have similar recommendations to ensure that the reinvestment aims to address the harm caused by cannabis prohibition disproportionately impacted in disproportionately impacted communities. And that reinvestment should be tailored to the unique circumstance and historical disparities to promote social and economic equity. So these, again, are just general recommendations. And then the next slide, we have our specific recommendation. So one of the main things, and it's not on this slide, but something that, again, Tiffany and I found really helpful in our analysis was the county level data. Being able to have having the county level data allowed us to do better comparisons, I think with some of the national data that was already in existence. Specifically for the Rhodes intake survey, I think having a quarterly or biannual check in with businesses that have filled out the survey to see how needs have changed and how the cannabis control board in the social equity program can continue to support SE businesses, for example, like continuing in education, different staffing opportunities, et cetera, expanding the areas of service or support for the blue highlights, which I know, as I kind of explained those a little bit earlier, you know, could the cannabis control board offer training or business classes with the SE fund or utilize that funding to support businesses who need everything from soup to nuts. And then based on the sample of intake questions, it was kind of identified, difficult to identify if there were any major trends just because the sample wasn't that large. But that's just, it was, that's what it was. For the cannabis ID card holder anonymous survey, we felt that those who answered the questionnaire had very thoughtful recommendations for a lot of things that could potentially again be utilized by the board either through the through the distribution of the fund or collaborations with other state agencies or community partners. For the social equity interview questionnaire, still deliberating on our feedback and recommendations there as well. And then just an overall general recommendation is establishing a lived experience advisory panel to work with the cannabis control board on reinvestment to impacted communities. And I understand that the ACCD holds the money, but still thinking about how we can collaborate there and ensure that we have folks who have been directly impacted allocating or assisting and allocating where that money should go. Next please. In conclusion, so this, this slide deck, this report provides an overview basically of the qualification criteria for social equity licenses. I know that we talked about economic empowerment licenses as well and presents a comprehensive breakdown of individuals who met those eligibility requirements. It also highlights the need for further investigation into potential additional qualifications to ensure that the fair and equitable distribution, that there is fair and equitable distribution for such licenses. And that's it. Thank you. Wow. Thank you, Laura. That was a lot. I would, I would love to open it up for any questions, but also I don't know if the folks from the cannabis control board who are here have any thoughts they would like to share as well. Why don't we hear, yeah, well, we'll hear, we'll hear some questions first and then, and then I'd love to hear anything that CCB has to say. Chief Stevens, hand is up. Yeah, I don't even know where to start. I'm trying to figure out why we are socially beneath black and Hispanic and why we are not considered socially equitable. We are on the level with medical cards and other things. I guess I, it's baffling to me that we are not included. I'm just reinforcing the whole BIPOC that I is not, I don't know, I'm just a little frustrated that we, you know, that we, the American Indian wouldn't qualify for social equity. Anyway, I'll just be quiet there, but it's just, I'll just, I'll just leave it at that. Does anyone want to respond to that? I'm happy to respond to that. So the legislation required us to come up with criteria for social equity applicant in the US to kind of directives. It's people who have been personally impacted by cannabis prohibition and that one was relatively easy to deal with. We just said, if you or a family member has been incarcerated for a cannabis related offense, you have been personally impacted by cannabis prohibition. The other more challenging kind of criteria was you have a social equity applicant as an individual from a community that's been historically disproportionately impacted by cannabis prohibition. And so that by cannabis prohibition really kind of like throws things into a little bit of a tailspin because there are certainly many communities that have been harmed by government policies or government sanctioned activities. So this whole like project seemed a little bit arbitrary to us at the board and we worked with a team of people including, you know, we had an advisory committee and a social equity subcommittee of that advisory committee that kind of walked through all of the data that we had and looked through every other state that's had to kind of deal with what is a community that's been disproportionately impacted by cannabis prohibition. No one's figured out really a good way to do this. I have a list if you'd like to see it of just how every state kind of defines social equity applicant or a community that's been disproportionately impacted. The kind of very basic approach is to identify a geographic subdivision of the state that uses either kind of like census tracts or zip codes or policing districts, something that kind of like creates a geographic area to define community and then, you know, they look at, you know, some sort of like social determinant of health whether that be kind of high rates of poverty, participation in federal assistance programs, employment criminal convictions, things along that in those lines during a specified period of time also kind of like if you lived in Cook County, Illinois in this policing, this neighborhood between 1995 and 2000, then you're a social equity applicant. But if you lived there in 2005, you're not because it got gentrified or whatever else. So we tried to kind of overlay all of these various approaches on to Vermont using the data that we had and we just kind of came up kind of like with that map that you saw from the ACLU, like, okay, every, like, you know, Bennington or Chittenden County, Washington County, Rutland County are all disproportionate impacts areas. If you are from that county, then you're a social equity applicant. It all felt very arbitrary, over inclusive and at the same time under inclusive because obviously there's people in communities that have been disproportionately impacted by cannabis prohibition in other counties in the state. And there's certainly plenty of people in, you know, Chittenden County that have not ever been impacted by the criminal justice system or cannabis prohibition. So, you know, trying to like adopt a policy here just proved to be very challenging. That being said, we do have any number of reports and I sent them all to ATIME that just demonstrate very clearly that kind of, I mean, and this is, I think, to your point, Chief, that the data, as we've heard from Stephanie Seguino in the RDAB is just very kind of poorly collected in Vermont, especially Vermont, but also across the country. But it does very clearly demonstrate that Black and Brown people have been kind of pulled over at higher rates for cannabis offenses. They've been charged at higher rates as opposed to kind of ticketed, they've been sent or sent to diversion. They're getting higher incarcerated sentences, you know, and so like when you think about trying to determine what a community is, you know, we like, we have to meet a kind of very high constitutional bar to use race specific or not non-race neutral language in, you know, rule of regulation. So we had to kind of like bring the receipts, I suppose, in order to, we had to demonstrate, A, that there was a compelling interest, B, we had to show that there was a compelling need and that this solution, while it's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, could at least be defended if it were to be challenged and kind of the whole program disappears. Now, we recognize that there are people, there are communities that are not going to be captured as social equity applicants. And so we said at the board that, you know, if you, you can come to the board and say, I am from this community, however you want to define it, by geography, by race, by ethnicity, by origin, by gender, whatever you want. And if you can demonstrate that you've been disproportionately impacted by cannabis prohibition, you are immediately a social equity applicant. The board gets to kind of have a conversation and decide that. So, you know, as far as using the kind of, the kind of race specific language, whether, I mean, we all acknowledge that it's not right, but I like, and this is, I think, very essential to the work that you guys are requested to do. You might be wondering why you're getting this information about the cannabis industry at the racial disparities and the criminal and juvenile justice panel. It's because you have been asked to define community for the safe communities that have been disproportionately impacted by cannabis prohibition, the same task that we had. You've been asked to do this for the sake of appropriating money from the cannabis excise tax, you know, for community reinvestment in communities that have been disproportionately impacted by cannabis prohibition. So, you know, the reason why I think the board is here tonight is to kind of help everyone here understand all the rabbit holes that we went down trying to define this very challenging kind of piece of legislation. And the consequences for you all are even higher now because, you know, giving someone a cannabis license is not a systemic approach to what was a systemic problem. And it's also a very, it is by no means a golden ticket, like this is a high risk potentially high reward, but more often than not high failure industry. And, you know, people in the cannabis world don't have bankruptcy protection. They, you know, they don't have financing or lines of credit. They can't get a loan from a bank. So like the people that get into this industry are pretty much risking everything that they have in order to kind of participate. And what we have said continuously at the board is that that money from the excise tax should be reinvested in the communities that have been most harmed. And then that just leads to the question of what, well, which communities have been most harmed by cannabis prohibition. And that was a very long-winded response. And it's, it's imperfect. And I recognize that, but it is kind of just explaining the rationale instead of why we landed where we did. If you mind if I add to that? Oh, sorry, Kyle. Yeah, no, just go ahead, Julie. Well, you and I might be about to say the same thing. We did have a recent rule change. So that, that rule change defines community a little bit clearer and includes people who qualified for the FBPIR, which is the federal distribution program on Indian reservations. Well, that doesn't necessarily directly impact Vermont's first peoples that does include Indigenous people who live on Indian reservations and qualify for that program. It also, we also added SNAP, people who qualify for SNAP to that. And then more recently, I've been in touch with the Cannabis Indigenous Regulator, or Cannabis Indigenous Association and their founder, Mary Jane Oatman, and have talked with her more about how can we define and better understand the harm that has impacted Indigenous peoples? That is not what I was going to say, Julie. So that's great. No, I was going to try and put just a finer point on what James alluded to. I think if we take a step back and look at social equity programs and cannabis-oriented markets across the country, it's where a lot of the legal challenges lie these days. And I think we're really cognizant of that. And as James alluded to, when you're making race-based determinations in a government context, you need to be really careful of the record that you're creating to make sure that we don't, by mistake, sync the entire program. So I think we started where we thought we could build that record and be able to have folks approach us if they had a community that they thought would qualify. And I think a part of that in our logic was also to make sure that folks aren't getting into this program that otherwise may not belong in this program. Thank you. Jeffrey, you have your hand up. Go for it. Yes, first off, I'm very at one emotionally with what the chief is saying. I'm hard to imagine a community geographically that has been more damaged by settlers historically. And as a former state trooper, I can tell you that they were stopped and abused more frequently than people understand. But aside from that, and chief, I'm with you on this one, brother, but aside from that, I am very concerned, or no, I'm not concerned. I'm assuming good behavior and good thoughts. But I'm hoping that people are thinking about the security of the demographics of that license. All you got to do is drive over to New York state. And if that stuff comes up on a car stop, and you've got the criminal conviction, and you've got the license for marijuana, you're going to get jacked up. Period. That's it. So I'm hoping that somebody's thinking about the actual security, the dissemination of those applications, whether or not people get them. James, can you respond to that or Julie or Kyle? Well, I mean, it's not a totally great response to the second point, but all of our licensees are not allowed to cross state lines with any of their cannabis. I guess that maybe is a response, but I mean, it's in kind of rule and it's kind of in law that people can't cross over to New York with their kind of licensed legal cannabis. Yeah, I'm not talking about them crossing and talking about them being harassed because the information may not be held as closely as it should be in areas where it's illegal. And I'm not talking about them having dope in their cars. I'm talking about having the information pop up when somebody runs a plate. I don't think I just want to make sure I understand, Jeffrey, what you're saying. Are you, in terms of information being held securely and closely, do you mean the fact that they have a cannabis license or a cannabis ID card? Is that the information that you're referring to? I don't fully understand. I try to read it and I probably missed it, but I am concerned that the fact that people have cannabis license, I'm hoping that that information is held closely or even in application, and particularly if it's a license and a previous conviction. And I wasn't was unable to uncover that information. You know, James, you know me. I'm not a bomb thrower. We've worked on a lot of you know, boards together, but that's a concern to me. It really is. Yeah. And you know, we do have to walk somewhat of a fine line as a state agency that people need to know that we need to be transparent about who we are licensing. And so a lot of that information is public. And I think your concern is a good one, which is if we can find articulators that there is still a huge stigma around cannabis. And there's a lot of people that are very opposed to people selling cannabis, even if they're legally licensed to do so in Vermont. And, you know, you couple that with, you know, the majority of people have criminal history records that that could lead to a situation where especially if you're traveling out of state that or in the state that that cohort of our licensees might get targeted. Yola, did you have a question? I had some comments and questions. I'm sorry, Sheila. I'm sorry, Sheila. I just wanted to jump in really quickly because I realized that I don't I don't think I really set this up well enough in the beginning because I wanted to remind the group that the whole reason we're even we presented this today was because our team volunteered to assist with the ARDAP meeting its report mandate, which is out of Act 65. I'm putting it in the chat. And so as we kind of continue this conversation, I just wanted us to have that in the back of our minds that the ARDAP is being specifically asked by the legislature to report on cannabis. And so I would love for us to just kind of come with that lens. And I can just excerpt a little bit what what the mandate is. This is from Act 65. I'm looking at section 24 a and it says the ARDAP shall collaborate with local and national stakeholders to study the administration and funding of the cannabis business development fund gather qualitative and quantitative data informing the establishment and funding of community reinvestment for individuals and communities disproportionately impacted by the criminalization of cannabis. And then it gives a list of items that our study must do. So that is that's the mandate. And we're supposed to give that to the legislature in January on the 15th. So again, I don't want to cut I don't want to cut off or derail tonight's conversation. I just wanted to remind everybody that the underlying driver of it for this group is that we're asked to to report to the legislature on the business development fund and how to reinvest in communities that have been home. Thank you, Susanna. And and I also don't want to derail, but we do have a lot of other work to do for the legislature coming up and limited time this evening. So Sheila, I don't I don't want to cut off your question at all or end your comments. But also I think we will need to wrap up this portion of the agenda in just a few minutes. But go ahead, Sheila. So clarifying questions, Susanna, I'm just wondering what our directive is for tonight in hearing this report is since you all are sort of part of the RDAB, you've done that work and now we're here to be co-sign it or to give our feedback or amendments or suggestions to what is being reported. Is that a piece of what we should be doing tonight, which is what I'm hearing from some of the people in the room. But if you could be just direct of how should we be asking the questions or answering these concerns that will also achieve the goal that you mentioned to us right now. Yeah, thanks for that. So I I suppose where we just kind of pulled together some info that the CCB gave us on the social equity program and tried to package it in a way that could be useful to the RDAB and give it to this group so that this group can say here's what we think should be done with this money or this is how we think community should be reinvested in. So in the later slides on this deck, there are a couple of slides that have recommendations but those are really just conversation starters. So we don't we're not asking the RDAB to endorse anything that we're putting forward. We just kind of want to provide a sample menu of options and ask this group to consider what it thinks is going to be best for Vermont. So right now, I don't I don't want you all to endorse anything in particular, but I just am a little bit concerned at how close we are to our reporting deadline. And I know this group had so many other important things to work on that we haven't gotten to this yet. So I just wanted to make sure that we at least had a kind of first foray into that conversation tonight. We don't have to come up with with decisions tonight. Okay, thank you. So that wasn't my question. But I mean, that was my question for you. But what I raised my hand for was I have a multitude of questions because that was a very fast presentation. And it's not like I'm in the weeds with this group. And I think that typically how I've seen this group run since I've been a part of it, which is since the founding of it is is that we need time to digest and give our feedback, our recommendations, our lived experiences and our opinions. So I will add to Chief John Stevens and to Jeffrey's comments. I was astonished when I saw that. And the only thing that I could think of was, is this about, you know, color, you know, in that kind of sense? Is it is it why is Indigenous people, Native American people, American Indian people not mentioned in that? And some of my concern with that is concerns of what everybody else brought up. But it is it keeps coming up that it's an erasure. And we keep on saying there's not enough numbers to report. There's not enough this to this. There's not this. It's just it all equals erasure of the Indigenous people, in my opinion. It's like we're constantly having these conversations of they don't fit in this category. They don't qualify for this. They don't rise to this percentage of people, etc, etc. because of what has happened in our history of our state period with genocide and everything that's happened. And so I'm I am very concerned across the board and the work that we do that Indigenous people are not being included in these conversations. And so if there's a recommendation I would make is that we need to do better on that. We need to absolutely be looking at that because as Jeffrey said, and as Chief John Stevens said, like they are the greater portions of people who have been impacted. But we might not know that because we've only been around for a few years, you know. And so but but for those who we might be understanding and acknowledge more history, they know that. And so I think it's a disturbance to what we're doing if we don't consider the first people of this land that were here that we're not adding them into the conversation. And so I was concerned about that and the information that was presented. I have a bunch of questions, but I'll leave just one more. The other concern that I had and again, I'm trying to digest. So I'm just speaking from what I've digested so far is the difference between the SE and the EE. And what I saw was a bunch of white folks being able to access the EE. And that it seemed as though disproportionately that's having an overcast of the SE. So here we have in the SE where Indigenous Native people are not even recognized or they're recognized as a subcategory I think in the EE. And then we have the EE, which is like 81%, I saw on one file, which is crap load of white people who are getting to to have this because of these other factors, which I think X out from the statistics that are being shown what we're really trying to do with the SE. So I don't know if that makes sense to anybody of what I just said, but that's the way I'm chirping it. And that's the way it landed on me. And that's what I'm feeling in my bones. And I'm not sure I agree with it. I'm not sure with not with not being able to understand a little bit more of really what I went into that and slowing down in the nuances of what can be shifted with that. And I'm a person who understands the intersectionality and there's many different intersectionalities that we should be looking at. And by doing those intersectionalities that were presented to us today, it seems like a lot more white people are gaining qualification criteria and access and disproportionately to people of color. And I thought that the whole point of why we're here is for it to not be that. And so I'm a little distressed at the information that I'm seeing on this. And if somebody has a different understanding or interpretation of what I just explained, I'm open to that as well. And I'll leave my other comments, maybe for another time, or maybe I'll pop them in the chat to allow other people some space. Thank you. Thank you, Sheila. I just want to highlight something you said, which is absolutely true. And that is we all need time to digest all of this information. It's a lot. Aton did send the fly deck out on the ninth, which was last Thursday. And so I just think we all have a lot of homework to do now, right? Like we need to really think about what we've heard tonight, the analysis that ORE did. And we need to be able to come back to our December meeting with what the RDAB's recommendations would be in light of what we've learned. Judge Morrissey. Thank you. And again, it was a lot of information, so I hope I got it right. But I think it said that for the first year, if folks qualify for one of these EE or SE licenses, that the first year the application fee is waived as is the licensing fee. And then the second year, it goes up to 25% of the fee. And then the third year, it's 50%. Did I get that right? Is that right? Okay. So and now that the program's been up and running, first of all, what is the range of these licensing fees? Like how much do people actually have to pay for this stuff for one of these licenses? And do you think you said, Mr. Pepper, James Pepper, that it's a high risk, sometimes high reward, oftentimes high failure for some of these folks that apply? And do you think that that graduated approach makes sense? Like, is it realistic that after one year, somebody will be able to afford 25% of the licensing fee? Or should that be modified to given the experience that you've all had? Does that schedule for the increase in the fee makes sense? And again, I just have no perspective in terms of what these fees actually are, because I'm trying to figure out if that's a deterrent to people applying, because they don't think they can actually come up with that money after a year. So that's what I'm trying to understand. Thanks. Yeah. So I think the most expensive license we have, if off the top of my head, it's $10,000 for a retail license. The most inexpensive license that we have is $750, which allows you to grow 125 plants. So I mean, you can make a modest, probably not enough to kind of sustain a salary, like a full-time salary by growing 125 plants. Maybe you can, but it's kind of more of a side, like supplemental income. But I think the thinking is just that if you're successful, even at 125 plants, you're probably going to be through your business profits, be able to afford paying 25% of $750. So, and Sheila, if you don't mind, can I just say that the thing that the board really got hung up on was this communities that have been disproportionately impacted by cannabis prohibition. My suggestion to you all is to ignore that by cannabis prohibition and use a proxy that people that have been armed by government policies or government sanction activities and just leave it at that and explain your rationale for that. It's this by cannabis. That was a tool of systemic racism. That was one tool that was used, but please just know that there is a lot more going on with government sponsor or government-led activities that have been very damaging. And I think that's where you'll be able to identify communities a little bit easier than if you're trying to just square this circle of trying to find specific communities, either by geography, by race, ethnicity, origin, whatever else, and try and tie it to cannabis arrests. I would just echo what James said. We certainly got really hung up on that. And that's why I stressed some of the sentiment of we just made sure we could make decisions based on the record we could build, but we didn't. We don't have the same ability to kind of make changes that could help alleviate some of the concerns that I've been hearing here today. Thank you, Rebecca. Thank you everyone for presenting this material. I think I heard Susanna say I just want to confirm because it feels like this is the first time we're hearing anything about it this and it's November 14th. Is that fair? Did I miss a previous discussion on this? No, I think we've just kind of very briefly acknowledged that the mandate existed, but the group has not sunk its teeth into the work at all. We had a lot. I mean, you all know what we were looking at. So I want to join the concerns already raised by Jeffrey and Chief and Sheila and Susanna. I was just reading closely Act 65 that you posted and the legislature requires us to meet not less than four times on this subject prior to making recommendations. I think that given the calendaring right now, I don't see how we can meet. Erin, I take your point about us having to observe all of these things that we're getting right now, including mine, which is two more agenda items down in terms of language that I just sent out tonight for the group. But I would recommend tabling this topic now. If we want to move forward on this and in fact try to meet this January 15th deadline, maybe that should be the action item right now. And then we should schedule some time to meet that requirement. I don't see how, it's a lot of effort that would be required, but I'd like to hear other people's opinions on that. I mean, I'm not the chair of this panel. I'm just filling in for Aton. So I can't make a decision tonight, certainly. I would say, I agree with you, Rebecca. There's no way we can possibly come up with recommendations for this, about this matter right now. I think we are running out of time. The calendar is frankly intimidating to me right now. I know there were some conversations when this legislation passed, because it was a bit of a surprise to Aton. I know there were some conversations about what was expected of us and about the deadline. And I don't know the outcome of those conversations, but certainly I will connect again with Aton and we can send an email around how we're going to try to get all of this work done. It might mean we just need more meetings before the end of the year, because we can't, we certainly can't figure out everything we would want to figure out for our report on this matter right now. And we have 40 minutes left in this meeting and three other different pretty heavy topics to delve into a little bit more. So are there any, yeah, Susanna. I think that would be helpful. I mean, of course, we've made the DRJS available to assist on this. So if there's research or something data or nerdy that you think that the DRJS can contribute while we, the RDAF, are figuring ourselves out on this, then you can let us know. And between Laura, Tiffany, and I, we can at least try to advance something on it while we kind of come to a determination. And again, we don't need to make that decision tonight, but you all can just ping us and let us know. Thank you, Susanna. And thank you for all of the work you've already done, because I know that was one part of the, what happened from the surprise legislation is that Aton and some of us were like, how are we supposed to do this? We don't, this is not our skill set, and we don't have time to do what this is asking. So, and then the Office of Racial Equity stepped up. And so it's just much gratitude. And also, thank you to James and Julie and Kyle for being here as well. Anyone have any last things to say on this topic before we move to the next agenda items? Yeah, can I be acknowledged? Oh, Mark, yes, I'm sorry. I didn't even see that your hand has been up. Yes, please. Thanks. It's fine. No, I just wanted to chime in on it because it was us who actually wrote the policy. And it was a collaboration with NOFA and rural Vermont and growers and nursing. And I just would just, at the same time, I've lift up what Chief and Jeffrey and others are saying and not to dismiss it, but to more qualify it as a pre-existing condition because it existed before this, that challenge existed before this policy was provided. And I just would just emphasize the fact that the marijuana commission never mentioned equity at all. But they didn't mention stuff like prevention or education. And that's the reason why those things were flagged for excise distribution. And despite our putting forward policies, requesting the legislature take a closer look and really dig into Connect 65, that language around community reinvestment. I think that's, those are the two big words that we were, you know, and it's been in our policy that we put forward on multiple sessions. Namely, I think it's H414, a couple of, like last biennium or something like that. What we ran into is the Senator Cummings said, you know, give me some information to convince me that we should be, that we should take this into consideration. Because again, there was nothing that has informed the legislature because there was no sufficient research provided to the legislature surrounding community reinvestment approaches in this kind of work. So we thought we should just write into this policy the ability to provide as the capability to go back and augment the research that had not been provided to the legislature previously. Because clearly, just enabling someone to enter into the market is not the silver bullet to equity at the end of the day. And I just really want to super lift up what Pepper said about systemic racism. And that's really the qualitative look, if you will, at the work that we're trying to get done here. I'll leave it there. I just wanted to just really just make it clear to the ARDAP that this work did come from somewhere. It was very intentional. And it was, it had everything to do with community reinvestment. And our hope was is that the research would be framed, the quantitative research would be framed with qualitative analysis. And I think that it's not really the objectivity that dismisses systemic racism. Rather, it should embrace the political and economic divide along racial lines that has been created by our government in the fact that, as James said, the criminalization of marijuana is just one of many tools that have been used to actually execute that. So that's the hope that I show up with in the ARDAP is that in your deliberations and in the analysis that those things would be taken into consideration and also be mindful, obviously, of the Joint Legislative Resolution R113, their commitment that they would indeed do everything they could do to eradicate systemic racism as the legislature. So I'll leave it there. And thank you for allowing me to chime in here. Thank you, Mark. I'm really glad you did. And I apologize if I suggested that the issue is not important. When I said it was kind of a surprise, I meant that it came up at the end of the legislative session. And then with a relatively short deadline to turn something around that is really complicated and takes a lot of resources, all at the same time that this panel was already wrestling with a lot of other additional and related complicated issues with not a lot of resources. So again, just thanks to everybody who's been helping out on working on this. And we do need to turn... If I could just respond to that, please. And I think Pepper is probably best suited to chime in on this one is the sense of urgency is that there's a stack of money right now that needs to be... There needs to be some decisions on it. And if we don't make decisions on it, then it'll go to the general fund. I don't know, Pepper, if you had any additional information on that. Well, yeah. And I understand the time constraints here. I would just say that the cannabis excess tax is being collected in a special fund right now. And that special fund is set to transfer to the general fund. So if there is no kind of plan for that money, it will just go to the general fund. And so the notion of community reinvestment, I mean, it's dependent upon someone coming in and explaining to the legislature which communities have been disproportionately impacted by government sanction, government led activity. And how do we try and use targeted funds to alleviate that? So I think it is an important conversation. It's timely. It's very challenging. And I would just say that the cannabis board, I know no one likes the direct, including the three commissioners, no one likes what we did on defying social equity. We tried to follow the law and we tried to make it legally defensible. But we are happy to serve as a resource in every which way that we can to kind of explain why we did what we did and how you can avoid doing what we did when it comes to community reinvestment, you know, investing in communities with actual tax dollars. Thank you so much for that. I'm sure we'll be in touch. We need your help. Okay. Any last hands I've not seen or voices that need to speak before we move on to the next items? Okay. Thank you again, everybody for all of that. Next, we really need to keep talking about how we're going to get our various recommendations together from our three subcommittees into our report for the Legislature. I believe the deadline is February. And just a couple of admonishments from Aton that he asked me to share with all of you. One is that he's really pleading with us to make sure that whatever we are recommending, whatever any particular subcommittee wants to propose, we recommend, really needs to be able to articulate how it would have a statewide impact. Even if the recommendation is to ask for funding, we need to make sure we're communicating the impact that recommendation would have statewide. Another plea from Aton, if I could read my own notes, is really, I don't know what that says. I think it just says, everyone, please get your homework done. We need to figure out a way that we can, everyone's recommendations can go into a shared document that we can all spend time reviewing, digesting and weighing in on outside of this meeting without triggering us having a quorum in which we are meeting because that would violate open meeting laws. And so we'll talk about that, how we do this in a moment. And if anyone has any smart ideas, I'm really, really going to ask you to please share them. But the primary point that Aton wanted me to stress was just that we need to get this done now. And for his part, he is working on the resume of the 2019 report. In other words, going through what we said we would do in that 2019 report, what we have done and what we still need to work on. So that's what he's drafting right now. And we have three subcommittees that have put together various presentations and various proposed written recommendations. And we need to hear briefly from those committees, subcommittees tonight. Before we do, does anyone have a smart way that we can all share in the editing of a document without violating open meeting laws? We're all on a billion committees. We must, there must be some way that someone's done this in a smart way with the inside of, in the bounds of the law. Susanna? Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, we could, everybody use the same template and then, you know, like a document and then send it to a person who can then populate a table of some sort. It's a little bit clunky and it loads a lot of the effort onto one or a small group of people, but I think that's the way to do it to avoid the collaborative documents problem. The other thing I would say, I mean, that's just for the sort of generating the ideas. Once we have them, I could put together sort of a dot voting situation for us if we would like, which feels a little bit like runoff voting or multi-voting, where, you know, every one of you gets four or five, however many dots or hearts or stars that you want to allocate to the ideas that you want to lift up the most. And then that way we could just see through a plurality process what we're into as a group. But again, that's kind of down the line after we have solidified an actual list to work from. Well, that would be a couple of suggestions from me, but obviously I'm open to whatever the group wants to do. I love the dot voting idea and I would definitely need your help with that. I think, right, before we get to that, I think you're right, that there needs to be like one or two people that everybody is sharing their proposed recommendations with that then can go into one document for everybody to see, read, and then weigh in on at our next meeting. So that will be me and Atom. Please send me and Atom what you would propose goes into our report. I can compile that and share that with everybody. But what we can't do is then get in some kind of like reply all email chain where you're doing track changes and everybody's weighing in on the document that you receive. You would have to save those kinds of comments for this meeting after it's noticed. Erin, I'm going to strongly recommend that you give folks a sorry. Sorry. I'm going to strongly recommend that we use a template because otherwise you're going to get things in a different format and it's going to be harder for you to collate everything. I just did one for a different working group. So I'll send you that if you want. I'd be great. Yeah, thank you. Any and I'll help. I appreciate you so much, Susanna. So we'll do that. So that means that Susanna, you're going to send me the template and then I will start out plugging the various draft proposals from each subcommittee and share it back out. Is that right? Does that make sense to everybody? And two draft proposals just came to you this evening. One from the Juvenile Justice subcommittee, one from the second look subcommittee and then we also need to hear from the community safety report folks. And we have 25 minutes. So we'll just let the agenda guide us and I will so that we're all on the same page. I will summarize our next steps in an email to you all. Not like you have to remember everything that I've tried to explain here for our plan tonight. So that will come to you. But let's hear from the subcommittees and the first up would be the community safety report subcommittee. I don't know if that's. Sheila or Witchie? Well, I don't think Witchie is on the call and I wasn't prepared to be able to do that. I'm not exactly sure what the group is asking us for today after our presentation that we made from a few weeks ago. If you could clarify that. Sure. I think what we're trying to talk about tonight is some like an overview or bullet points that you would anticipate wanting to see in the R-DAPS written report to the legislature. And so, yes, we've had some awesome community safety report and community safety oversight presentations. What from all of that would you envision going into the report that would be in the form of like recommendations to the legislature? And if you're not prepared to present those this evening, that's totally fine. That's just what the point of this portion of the meeting is. Yeah, I apologize. I'm not. I know that Witchie had sent out some of those recommendations I believe before that we got in our emails. And so I was hoping that he was going to be on the call today, but I could follow up with the group and email those responses if we don't already have them to be really clear, but I don't have anything further to report on tonight. Okay, that's fine. When you get the template that everybody can be pasting their draft proposals into, you can, everyone will see it that way and we can discuss at our next meeting. Great. Sound good? Okay. Thanks, Yola. Hi to Witchie, wherever you are. And the Juvenile Justice Subcommittee. I guess I'll keep it brief because I don't only have 22 minutes left and we did take up a long time presenting on the ideas, or Tyler did. Thank you, Tyler, since I wasn't able to be at last month's meeting. So Erin has sent a document around to everybody. So you should have that in your inboxes. It's essentially what Aton had asked of us to do, which is to take our thoughts and ideas and put them in expanded upon bullet points. It's about two pages worth of information that separated into three primary topics or recommendations of things that we believe are going to be already coming up in the next legislative session anyway, and that would be beneficial for ARDF to have an opinion on. Just for a quick review for anybody who was in our last meeting or didn't watch the Orca media recording or read the notes, those include raising the minimum age of juvenile court jurisdiction from 10 to 12. They include requiring data, race and ethnicity data to be recorded in the Vermont Judiciary database. Right now, and I will just say yesterday, I looked at federal fiscal year 2023 data from Odyssey and 22.87 percent of juvenile delinquency cases or any not necessarily delinquency, it could be a youth discharged as an adult. Any youth under the age of 19 is either not known, just completely blank, or recorded as unknown. So that has been something that's been an issue for many, many, many years. And then thirdly is the recommendation and this one we talked about, or you guys talked about last meeting, it didn't quite come to a opinion or regarding perception versus self-identification. So we got together and recommended that it be both. That is the basis that currently FSW, FSD is currently moving forward with when it comes to our child welfare population. And we believe that it would be beneficial for our judicial process to do the same. What that would mean would be the law enforcement, would be recording perception at the time of arrest and then later self-identification of that youth would be asked and then recorded down. I will add a couple of notes that I think are pretty important when we're talking about those recommendations, one of which I know that there was conversation about the number of youth that raising the minimum age would impact, especially when we're talking about racial disparities and that there was some conversation about, you know, there were five 11-year-olds who were in, who had cases that were filed. And is that the same youth filed five different times or is that five individual youth? And my argument would be regardless of the case, excuse me, regardless of if that is one individual who's being arrested multiple times in multiple instances over the course of a year or if it is one, I believe that that's still a disparity and that still is showing that our youth of color being over represented in our system just in a different viewpoint than perhaps what some of us in the system really like to see. That means that that one youth still being arrested five different times versus our white youth who's only being arrested once, that's still a lot of trauma for that one youth. So I do believe that this would have an impact for our 10 and 11-year-olds. The other piece that I wanted to just lay out, and this is more of an ask for this group, many of these topics are things that the Council for Equitable Youth Justice is discussing. And I know, for instance, they have met with Rep Small, who is the representative who sponsored each 142, which includes raising them in age from 10 to 12. And they are interested in writing a letter of support that RDAB could theoretically add as an appendix or at the end of their report. So I just wanted to pass that along and see if people thought that that might be something that would be interested in. And Tyler, feel free to fill in all the blanks. I don't think I need to. I have that. Thank you so much, Elizabeth. I had a lot of chances to talk about this last month, but I'm happy to weigh in as people have thoughts and questions. I see Rebecca as her end up. Hi. Clarifying questions, Elizabeth. The last thing you point you made, whether or not we want to consider, including a letter as an appendix, I think, you know, as soon as you get a sense of that, just share it around so we can see what it is. I am on this committee, but I had a clarifying question of the proposal, first part, which is about recommending, well, here's the question. Is there a recommendation in there to a particular age? Are we just making a recommendation to raise the minimum age? So I see there's reference points to different places around this area, including New Hampshire up to 13. And of course the reference to age 142, that includes 12. Are we keeping the age out or are we putting an age in as to what particular age to increase? Yeah, I think that's a great question, Rebecca. And I'd be really interested to hear what the rest of this group thinks about that age. I can tell you that age 142 includes 12. But from what Rep Small has told the Council of Correctable Youth Justice, they landed on 12 not for a specific reason. She said that she was responding to actually an ask to raise it to 14 and thought that 12 was a more achievable ask. So I guess I would turn to other members and see if they have an opinion on that. I don't mean to dominate, but I'll respond if no one else has something. So what I hear you say is that the recommendation 12 was a political decision. That's what the Council of Correctable Youth Justice learned from Rep Small when they asked. Thanks for confirming. So the question for our depth is whether we want to land on a recommended age, given what we know from the information you've shared, is that at least for age 142, what we have is a political decision. Although you just shared that 16, I think, or 14 was an age that was considered, or was it 16? 14? It was 14, and I can put in the chat the information that guided Rep Small's proposal where 14 is asked about. If you just give me a moment. Regarding this question about whether we're going to specify the age, well, or any questions that we would want to try to figure out answers to tonight, several of us on this panel are designees from offices that we would have to, of course, take up to the people who lead those offices. I'm an example. I am not the Attorney General, so any of our potential panel recommendations in my office, I need to take to my Attorney General and vet there and have conversations there before I could weigh in this evening. And I'm probably not alone in that. Rebecca, is that a new hand? No, new hand. I apologize. It's taking me a moment to find the documents from Human Rights Roch, but I will find it and it might be best if I send it to Erin so I don't hold up the group too much longer. And while we're talking about anything that might be helpful for us to all have our eyes on for this report, if you are a member, you should have access to our RDAB SharePoint. I created a folder for the 2022 to 2023 report. It's purple. You can put stuff in there. I'm going to post the stuff that was shared around this evening. And so like Elizabeth, for example, any additional stuff that you want to put in there, you can send to me and I'll do it. Or if you have access, you can do it yourself. I know you've mentioned other potential appendices for the juvenile justice portion. Yeah, I would just add, you know, we have we have data from DCF we can provide from from on student sharing. And also, you know, I think I would show the map of where other states are, all those things might be applicable infographics or information for the legislature. Fantastic. Anything else from this subcommittee or questions or comments for this subcommittee? Okay, I don't see any. Then I think I get to hand it over to Rebecca to chat about second look. Okay, thanks, Erin. So Erin sent around a sustained a mini assessment statement of critical points that the subcommittee on second look has come up with and what I should say about that is we've had a number of people participate on a monthly meetings. I don't know when we started meeting was of January or sometime thereafter. But this most recent one, which we met last week, it was just just Brown and I who were able to make it. So what I want to share is that these points and maybe should I share the screen? I don't know how many people got that email. Let's see if I can do this. Yeah, I think that would be helpful, Rebecca. Okay. Can you see this? Okay. So what we talked about last month and at our meeting was that we're going to pull together some thoughts, some overarching ideas about whether or not we can land on some fundamental principles around second look legislation that our DAP could consider and then make a recommendation in this report. And we wanted to wait until a conference was conducted and I am glad Jess is here. She and her team at the not just BLGS, Jess, the restorative center for justice, center for restorative justice, I'm sorry, sponsored on November 3, which is a couple weeks ago, a second look conference all day. And we've shared that conference details to this group before. I believe it was recorded and we'll share with Aaron the link, but it was a full day of speakers dropping in to discuss second look issues and discussion points around it. Now, we also have heard from others over the course several months talking about the subject specifically that S155 is a pending bill introduced in the Senate last session, still pending and we learned more about that. I've shared previously with this group that the second look committee has been reviewing other states second look legislation and we're comparing notes on what were sort of the dominant characteristics as they compared with the S155 another model second look legislation put out by NACDL and I think that was it. In any event, here I wanted to pull together some thoughts. I also should share before, did that slide just change to we should have second look legislation? Sometimes that doesn't track when I click. I also want to share before I get to these four bullet points because this is really it. It's not a two pager, but it's really comes down to the essence. I should also add that Tim, Luther's Dumont, shared his sort of ongoing submission of questions and concerns about what second look legislation should include or questions that should be answered. I believe he shared that with the group. I'll let him resubmit that to Aaron if he indeed wanted that to get out to the group. I believe he did, but they were not discounted. They were considered by the subcommittee. We've looked at it. We also listened to Aton took it to heart that we didn't want the subcommittee to get bogged down into actually getting behind and endorsing a specific language like an alternative bill or a particular bill because we just didn't have the resources, the capacity to do it. Hence these four distilled bullet points. One second look legislation, which again is at its core, law that allows for review and reconsideration of the original sentence. Right now, Vermont only has that permissible after 90 days that the sentence is imposed or after direct appeal is done. That's it. 90 days, you're out of luck. It's all in. At its core, it's about allowing for review and reconsideration. It's not a get out of jail for review and reconsideration. So who gets to be looked at? Are there certain types of offenses that should be categorically excluded? Should only certain people who are convicted in sentence at a certain age, a commission of offense be considered youth or should only be for people who have been serving for 50 plus years, 25. What we learned from the conference and we heard experts, including a psychologist, JD, present on the science of recidivism and the occurrences of recidivism after various points in age, gender, and types of offenses. And again, Tim asked the question, but ultimately the answer was what resulted in our second bullet and our first bullet. That we hope that the legislature will be in recommendation for ARDAP that we make for our suggest to the panel to adopt as well is that whatever is decided, it be science and data driven and not political. And following that science and data what we learned from that conference is bullet two, that it is inconsequential in terms of recidivism rates, whether second look is exclusive or inclusive of violent types of offenses, murder, sex assault, right, or age limitations. We wanted to then take that data and confirm point three, which was really the purpose of the existence of our panel that it's not lost. Second look legislation that's passed around the country in various states, and I believe the current proposal S155 does not explicitly address focusing considering the impact of racial disparities on a sentence. We wanted to make sure that was brought for point three. However way we do it, the details of that, of course, is critical as is point one and point two, but we thought the proper place for that is not here in ARDAP or the subcommittee, but in the actual work done by the legislature and the committees. And then number four, what we saw missing in our criminal system generally to the detriment of not just people who are incarcerated and serving these sentences, but also to the victims. References were made to calling these people survivors. Survivors and that there was a recognition at the conference, the second look conference, that there's certainly not a monolith of people who are following this category of survivors or victims, right. But that the current system of sort of imposing original sentence for in perpetuity doesn't serve anybody because in fact the sentence isn't locked in time. People move on and it may be best for very many people involved directly in the case or society in general. As we learn as the law develops, whether it's US Supreme Court learning about these science and determining certain sentences are actually unconstitutional or societal norms and expectations and goals of sentencing shift over time. Or whether it's even the individuals in the in a particular lawsuit want to move on or to save various reasons. Again, we wanted the embodiment of restorative justice principles to be part of any second look legislation. And that also includes reentry support and not just for the offenders, but again thinking holistically of victims and offenders. I'm going to have two minutes left to eat a clock. Sorry. I'll stop sharing here. Thank you, Rebecca. And so what's next for for the these bullet points and recommendations from the second look subcommittee, they'll be fleshed out a little bit more and then that language could go into our shared template. When you say fleshed out, I'll say that I envision sharing what does the work of the subcommittee has done and the conference that happened. If anyone else has some suggestions on what should be included, absolutely like please send anything. I think most critically, I would love to hear what the thoughts are on those four bullet points, whether we're missing something or many or those things just need to be changed completely. Because I think I was just focused on the recommendations, the sub through recommendations. Yeah, great, because that's what a ton had asked of us. And I by fleshed out, I'm not I'm not trying to suggest that needs to be some long verbose diatribe about second look in general, but just things like, so for example, without age limitations, a little bit more about what that means, like, for example, you wouldn't have to have committed the offense under a certain age, or you wouldn't necessarily have to be of a certain age like 55 to be considered for a second look of your sentence. But just so that's all I mean by just kind of like articulating it with a little bit more me on the bones. Yeah. Okay, it's 759. I feel like we have a lot of homework to do. You're like, I have a lot of homework to do to help you all do your homework too. So I will connect with ATON. I will send out a kind of like summary of what we all agreed we'd be working on next. And if anyone wants to send me things to post in the SharePoint, or to be sending me drafts that we can put in that template, I would greatly appreciate it. And I'm missing I'm seeing that there's a bunch of stuff in the chat that I didn't see before. But Laura posted a YouTube link. Yeah, I was just going to mention that for those of you who are actually Laura, you can explain what it is way better than I can. That's probably not true. But a few weeks ago, I attended a webinar on combating car routes and doing different things and talking to policymakers and things like that. And I just thought it might be useful as part of our as what you brought up Rebecca. So I just popped it in the chat. I admittedly only was able to stay for the first hour. So I it's an hour and a half long, I think. But they talk primarily about sex offenses and drug charges related specifically to fentanyl, I believe. Okay, great. Thank you, Laura. Any last words other than someone making a motion to adjourn for tonight? Hey, my last words are just going to be to express my gratitude. Thank you. Jessica Brown wants to adjourn. Does anyone else for a second? I'll second that. Thank you, Tyler. All right. Thank you all. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Do I not want to adjourn? Okay, no. Thank you all.